Irving Babbitt (August 2, 1865 – July 15, 1933) was a Harvard literary scholar and cultural thinker. Babbitt’s books include; Literature and the American College (1908); In The New Laokoon (1910); The Masters of Modern French Criticism (1912); Rousseau and Romanticism (1919) & Democracy and Leadership (1924).

The Achievement of Irving Babbitt

By |2014-01-24T11:39:17-06:00February 22nd, 2012|Categories: Conservatism, Irving Babbitt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Tags: , |

Irving Babbitt To define Irving Babbitt’s central view of life, from which radiate all his other views—of letters, of education, of society—I commence by quoting not his own words, but those of a different writer—one whom he would not have approved. For in reading Bertrand Russell’s recent autobiographical volume Portraits from Memory, I [...]

How Conservatives Failed “The Culture ”

By |2019-04-07T10:52:26-05:00October 10th, 2011|Categories: Claes Ryn, Conservatism, Culture, Featured, Film, Irving Babbitt, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr.|Tags: |

Many supposedly intellectual conservatives seem to consider ideas and culture from afar, as it were, feeling no deep personal need for or intimate connection with them. Some are in a way attracted to the arts or even to philosophical speculation, but see no significant and immediate connection between these and the life of practice. Ideas and [...]

Teenage Russell Kirk: His First Academic Article

By |2015-05-19T23:13:36-05:00August 31st, 2011|Categories: Aristotle, Bradley J. Birzer, Classics, Conservatism, Heroism, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Russell Kirk|

Below are quotes from Russell Kirk’s first published academic article, “Tragedy and the Moderns.” The article appeared in January 1940, when Kirk was just beginning his second semester of his senior year in college. He wrote it, however, during either his freshman or sophomore year at Michigan State, under and with the encouragement of his [...]

Democracy and Leadership: Irving Babbitt’s Classic

By |2018-10-16T20:25:22-05:00May 18th, 2011|Categories: Irving Babbitt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leadership, RAK, Russell Kirk|Tags: |

Irving Babbitt Democracy and Leadership, first published in 1924, still is in print at the end of a whole generation. This new printing indicates how little ephemerae found their way into the body of Babbitt’s writings, and how he foresaw, far more clearly than his opponent John Dewey, the great issues of the [...]

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